LOGISTICS

Logistics Assignment

Logistics Assignment

Part 1

Question 1a

Some of the key attributes of customer service for a supply chain are:

Interdependence

Movements that have occurred in the past and the opening of borders, strategic alliances and reducing suppliers have generated a high interdependence between the links in the chain. In fact this has been that competition is going to be firm against supply Chain Company. In other words to be fights between individuals to be gang fights.

Diversity of Interests

Since there are a variety of entities in a chain, each one has its own interests that do not necessarily coincide with each other. This diversity of interests leads to the generation of conflicts that inhibit collaboration along the chain from information sharing to the creation of joint actions among participating organizations. This lack of cooperation and failure causes generated cost overruns and waste.

Lack of Visibility

Any company located somewhere in the chain does not have full information about what is happening all over. For example, unknown aspects of final demand, or the position of customer inventories. This makes decisions based on partial information consistent with the results.

Communication and Competition

Communication technology has made deepened that the client can find anywhere in the world and that we can compete any competitor in the world. Then not only the chains have become more interdependent, but also have become much more dynamic and require much more agile responses.

The Battle for the Customer

Within Supply Chains, a good part of the battle for customers has been made in manufacturing. Although there are still things to be done in manufacturing, not enough. And service costs associated with providing an efficient customer response occur not only in manufacturing but in all product logistics and interdependencies found along the Chain. Thus, improvement efforts initiated in manufacturing have spread to other fronts (Lan & Unhelkar, 2006, pp. 121-28).

Question 1b

As per the author, following are the different challenges to the logistics that if the company overcome these challenges than it would be easy for the management to enhance the customer service in supply chain;

Mastering the basic processes 

The first major challenge faced by companies is to master the basic processes that predominate in the Chain. Processes like customer interaction (contributions, take orders, deliver), demand planning, product distribution, materials supply. Mastering basic process involves having a superlative performance through rules and procedures, use of information technology, organizational capabilities, and performance indicators.

Still along the chain there are a number of basic activities that are not mastered. In the interaction with customers, for example, even though most of the companies state that the service is a strategic aspect, how many are really faithful indicators of customer service and the consumer? It is the minority. Or, a critical process such as demand planning, where it is determined to meet demand, the way how you will meet and generate a plan governing the conduct of business (sales, production, materials, distribution, finance) short term, is for many companies a state in which one day aspire to be (Skipper, 2008, ...